So my nephew and I are on a road trip to pick up a Joker Poker he found. Very long drive, so we figured we've come this far, we have a half full pickup, lets check the local CL to see if there's anything else close by. Well, we find Pat Hand no more than 40 miles away. Guy wants too much, we throw a number at him, he agrees. We setoff, Joker Poker all packed up and go to find the Pat Hand.

We get to the place, I'm actually a little excited because the pictures we see are basically just the playfield and the backglass and they both actually looked quite good so I'm hoping the cabinet is in great shape. I'm assuming this because the guy has told us this machine has been in the same spot it is now for the last 30 years or so...

We walk in, my jaw drops, it's painted solid black from top to bottom... I was sick. That's not all. One of the chime coils burnt up at some point, so instead of buying a new $10 coil, they cut the wires, source (from where and at what cost who knows) an electronic sound card with speaker, wire the sound card inputs to the coil wires, cut a hole in the bottom of the cabinet and installed a speaker. It actually worked and the game actually played for the most part. I was ready to walk away, at this point I really didn't want the machine and as I was walking out I turned back and offered him $100. I figured if nothing else we'd have parts for my brothers Space Odyssey he got from me. Guy says load it up!

We loaded it, and as I'm driving home I kept thinking what is my wife going to say about me dragging this disaster home... The more I thought about it, the game played, the playfield was actually nice, the backglass was in very good shape and I'd always wanted to do a cab repaint. Turns out my wife actually likes the game. She really, really likes the playfield and BG art, the contrasting colors did it for her.

My plan: Redo (not total resto) but rebuild/refurbish and give to my wife for her birthday!

So I started to try to strip the black off to see what was underneath. Started with gojo, nothing, mineral spirts, nothing, then came Acetone. BIG mistake. Did some damage to the original paint to the right side of the coin door. Started researching it here, found a few posts, in the end bought a gallon of Xylene. The Xylene working great. Slow and smelly, but it's working. The art work underneath is actually in great shape! WHO DOES THIS???

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Chime box is there, but missing the bars and lock down parts. Need those if anyone has them. The sounds are sort of space themed, think 80s lasers, computer beeps etc... hmm, I should put that in my brothers Space Odyssey. He'd have a one of a kind, lol!

Progress!! I'm not sure what kind of paint this black was but turns out Xylene was definitely the way to go. I actually removed the playfield, laid the cab on it's side then put some Xylene in an empty spray bottle. Sprayed the entire side down, let it sit for just a minute or so, then scraped with a plastic body filler spreader. Black came right off in thick tar like gobs. I followed up with more Xylene and wiped it down with rags. Once I got this on it's side I removed the paint in under 10 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I can only guess that some guy owned this and the pink was too much for him, because the original artwork is actually still in very nice shape.

I still have to remove the paint from the head. Then I'll move on to mechanical.

Anyone have any leads on Williams chime parts? I need the actual chime bars (although I can make these easy enough), the small metal hold down strips and the pins that push through to hold everything down. I can make all these parts, but if someone had a set at a reasonable price, I'd buy.

I'll post more as I make progress.

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